So I recently discovered the "Gun" mod for Stardew Valley. Well, it was a mod. I can't find any trace that it's ever even existed on the internet, and I've already scrubbed my hard-drive of every byte that it has ever occupied. Probably for the best that it's disappeared, if I'm being honest.

This mod was... Really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Like, really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Obviously, I'm about to tell you just how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up it was, but I need to give you some background to start off with. At first, when I saw it on NexusMods, I had a good laugh at even the concept of it. After all, Stardew Valley might have some darker undertones here and there, but it's still a relatively light-hearted, cheery game. Sure, there was some violence when you fought monsters in the mines, but that was pretty tame, even child-friendly. Either way, the idea intrigued me. There wasn't any description for the mod, just a single image of the default farmer wielding the gun, and the file itself. There were only a handful of views, even less downloads, and not even a single endorsement. It was pretty obvious to me that this was probably a pretty bad mod, and it might not even properly launch, but I wanted to check it out, either way, just for the giggles of it. I had assumed that the gun was meant to be used like the other weapons - exclusively to fight monsters in the mines. As you might have guessed, well, that wasn't exactly the case. Far, far from it.

As some of you might know, you can, in fact, use the slingshot on the villagers in the base game. It doesn't do anything beyond making them give you an angry dialogue and decreasing your friendship points with them a bit, though - a great way to do things if you ever wanted to make the entire village hate you, which I did once for the heck of it. Since the gun was similarly a ranged weapon - I tested it out on my farm and it used objects as ammo in the same way that the slingshot did, so I assumed it was nothing but a clone of the slingshot with a different texture and sound effect - I decided to see what happened if I shot one of the villagers with it. So I went down into the forest, and took a shot at the first villager I found - it was Leah, which made me feel kind of bad, since she was generally my go-to marriage candidate.

There was no angry dialogue.

What happened instead was that Leah's dialogue box popped up, with her portrait next to it. It was not any face that I had ever seen Leah use in her dialogue. That was mostly because her face was a bloodied pulp, blown to pieces by the gun I had just shot her with. Her entire mouth and nose was missing, replaced with gore. One of her eyeballs was hanging down, since the lower part of its socket was currently absent. Bone and grease and blood and... Everything was splattered all over the portrait. Instead of any actual dialogue being spoken by Leah, the text in the dialogue box itself read:

[YOU HAVE KILLED LEAH]

Once I closed the dialogue box, her sprite collapsed on the ground, and blood began to spread to the tiles around it.

Obviously, this freaked me the ♥♥♥♥ out. I had just expected some dumb slingshot texture replacement mod, and I already felt like I had got far more than I had bargained for. I decided to quit the game and restart from the beginning of the day, to roll back on me having shot Leah with the gun, since it seemed like there would probably be some permanent effects if I finished the day off. I promptly stored the gun in a chest, figuring it would be best if I wasn't hauling an item around that could cause such a disturbing scene like that.

I went about my day, doing the usual, watering and gathering crops, then heading down into town to do the usual social runs.

...but I couldn't find Leah. Since she was my typical marriage candidate, I had essentially memorized her schedule like the back of my hand, mostly just by having followed it so many times over my years of playing Stardew. It was spring, since I had started a new game to try out the gun, and she was supposed to be in the woods at 4:00. At 6:30, she was supposed to be by the lake. She was not there.

I was obviously concerned, given what I had done and witnessed before reloading my save; even so, I decided that Leah not showing up at her scheduled places might have been some kind of glitch or bug or something from the base vanilla game, and decided to go to bed. Surely Leah would be back on her usual schedule tomorrow, right?

She wasn't. Nor was she the next day. Nor the day after that. Eventually, I realized that Leah wasn't coming back, at least not on this save file. Even though I hadn't finished the day off after shooting Leah before, the gun mod must have done something to my save file to make sure that she was permanently "killed", even if I tried to roll things back.

Okay, I figured, whatever. This was a new save file, so I could just delete it and not care, and make sure not to use the gun on a villager in any of my other saves. Maybe take it down to the mines to ♥♥♥♥ around with it down there, but I wouldn't even dare to have it out while in town.

I went and loaded up one of those other saves, a file where I had married Penny, rather than Leah. I hadn't played this particular save file in a while, so I forgot that I had last saved right before the Festival of Ice. Figuring it would be a good way to get what had just happened with the gun mod out of my head, I quickly skipped down to town to get it started.

As you can probably guess: Leah was not there. Neither was her mermaid statue, for that matter. It was at this point I started to genuinely panic. Had the gun mod altered all of my save files? Was this some kind of malware that was intent on ruining my entire Stardew Valley installation?

I finished the Festival of Ice as quickly as possible, and didn't even bother doing any of my daily farm chores, or even talking to Penny. I went straight to bed, and loaded up the next day.

Since I had befriended everybody in this playthrough, I decided to rush down to Leah's cottage and check on her as soon as possible. In spite of me having befriended Leah, though, the door was locked. Now, I was starting to get angry. How badly had this mod ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up my game? My game with hundreds, if not thousands of hours in it. After giving me the usual "Only Leah's friends can enter uninvited..." dialogue box, another one popped up:

[DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU'RE A FRIEND AFTER WHAT YOU DID TO HER?]

Now the mod was just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with me. I clicked past that dialogue box, and another new one popped up again:

"Some sort of weapon could probably break the lock..."

Was that really what the mod was going to make me do? I really didn't want to play its game, but I still wanted to check on Leah, to make sure that this mod hadn't done... Something to her in all of my other save files just because of my little experiment. So, despite my apprehensions, I rushed back to my house, and went to pick up the gun from where the mod is supposed to spawn it... Except, it wasn't there. I immediately knew where it likely was, though; I always ended up putting chests in the same spot for every playthrough, so I went to the chest that was in the same place as the one from the test save I had just deleted. Sure enough, there it was, the gun, almost like it was waiting for me in that container. I grabbed it, but made sure it wasn't on my hotbar, so that I couldn't accidentally use it on Penny or the kids.

...would it kill the kids? I didn't really want to think about it at that point, so I just rushed back over to Leah's house.

When I got there, I set the gun in my hotbar, made sure that no villagers were around, and then used it on the door.

[THAT'S NOT VERY NICE, NOW IS IT?]

Stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mod. Either way, I interacted with the door, and it let me into her cottage. Except, it wasn't really anything like what I remembered her cottage to be. It reminded me more of the community center when

you first start the game, with boarded up windows, broken floorboards, no lights, her statue and paintings all destroyed, and...

Leah's dead body lying on the tattered carpet, which itself was stained red.

Of course. Of-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-course. Despite my better judgement, I went over and interacted with the body. Rather than the gored face from when I shot her in the other save file, this time her portrait was of her decayed, with her eyeballs missing, and maggots and other bugs coming out of her flesh. Parts of her skull were exposed, the skin having been eaten away, and what remained was grey and pale.

[BOY, BODIES SURE DO DECAY FAST, DON'T THEY?]

I was getting reaaaaal sick of that snarky dialogue, to say the least. Deciding I had finally had enough of the mod, I promptly exited out of the game entirely, and went to my mods folder to delete it.

Except, it wasn't there. I had placed it in there only an hour or so earlier. I know I hadn't interacted with it afterwards, and had only started up SMAPI once to launch the game. But, in spite of a few minutes of looking around the game folders, the file for the gun mod was missing.

It was at this point that I decided that this piece of ♥♥♥♥ mod really was malware.

Either way, I figured that the mod must have deleted itself somehow, and was content with that. I launched the game through SMAPI again, and didn't see the mod listed when I did. I loaded up the Penny save, went to check on Leah, and...

Nothing had changed. Her cottage was still in shambles, her body was still lying on the ground, and interacting with it only showed me the corpse portrait again... Except slightly more rotted at this point.

Alright, I thought. This ♥♥♥♥♥♥ wants to play this game? I backed up my saves, uninstalled Stardew completely, then did as fresh of a reinstall as I could. I even deleted all traces of anything connected to Stardew from the registry, for good measure. Replaced the save files, checked in again, aaaaand...

Still the same. Leah's corpse was nearly just a skeleton at this point, with her clothes barely hanging on.

[YOU CAN'T BRING BACK THE DEAD]

♥♥♥♥ I couldn't. It hurt, since some of my saves were several years in, but I was desperate and upset at this point, and acting on impulse. I deleted all of my saves, scrubbed Stardew from my hard-drive again, even going so far as to defrag to make sure the data was permanently deleted from it - it wouldn't be the last time I went that far, mind you. I did as fresh of an install as I could possibly manage. That had to have got rid of any trace of that stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gun mod, right?

I hit new game, made my character, hit the little "ok" button...

Before the intro cutscene started up, I was presented with an image of a black screen. On the screen, Leah's body - or what I presumed was Leah's body, since it was nothing but a skeleton with some rags at this point - was in the middle, with some text in the typical, cheery, Stardew Valley font as a header.

DEATH COUNT: 1

Christ. Good Christ and Lord in Heaven above. This ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mod. This ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mod. I skipped past all of the intro ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ as quickly as I could, and went back to the place where the mod initially places the gun. It was there this time, at least, but there was something along with it. A note.

[IF YOU WANT HER BACK THAT BADLY, THERE'S A WAY. JUST MAKE A CLEAN SLATE]

What the ♥♥♥♥ did that mean? I had already made as clean of a slate as I possibly could. I had deleted every single last ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bit of data both this mod and this stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game had left on my computer.

As I left my house, though, I realized what it meant. Penny was standing there, just in front of my porch. When I went to interact with her, there was no dialogue, and her portrait was the one of her crying in her bathing suit, from her ten heart event.

At this point, I felt like throwing my computer out of my window. But I was already knee deep in this, and for some twisted, stubborn reason, I felt like I needed to see it through.

I shot Penny, just like I had shot Leah before, and her portrait changed the same way Leah's had. Blood, gore, missing pieces of her face... It obviously wasn't just a copy and paste from Leah's dead portrait, though. There were subtle differences, small changes that let me know that this portrait for Penny had been hand-crafted separately from Leah's. What kind of sick ♥♥♥♥, honestly? Once more, a pool of blood began to form underneath her body, staining the dirt below her crimson.

[YOU HAVE KILLED PENNY]

After that, I decided to test things, just to see what had ended up happening. I rolled back the day to the start, and Penny was missing, so I went to her trailer to check on her, even though I knew what I would likely find. I had assumed that I would be able to see into her room once I entered her house, but all of the tiles in there were blacked out. Even though it was the first day and I couldn't possibly have befriended her, I went to her bedroom door, and it gave me the same message as when I had tried to enter Leah's cottage.

"Some sort of weapon could probably break the lock..."

Since I already had my gun handy, I went ahead and used it on the door.

[THAT'S NOT VERY NICE NOW IS IT?]

Once I had opened the door, I was able to see into Penny's room, as I would normally be able to. Of course, the room itself wasn't normal. It was in a similar state to Leah's cottage, with the book case destroyed and the potted plant shattered, amongst other things. And, as I expected, Penny's body lying there, in an early state of decomposition.

As I exited the room, still trying to figure out what the ♥♥♥♥ to do, Pam was standing there, blocking the hallway. Her dialogue box, as with Penny's, was empty, and her portrait was of her angry face. Deciding that at that particular moment that I wasn't up for killing any more villagers, I exited the game and restarted from the beginning of the day, even though I knew it wouldn't meaningfully change anything.

Except, I didn't start from the beginning of the day. The game placed me right back where I had left it, in Penny and Pam's trailer, with Pam blocking the hallway, and Penny's dead body a bit further rotted in her room.

I didn't have any choice, really. The portrait for Pam after I had shot her was, once again, lovingly crafted to detail the way that my gun had obliterated her face. Seriously. What kind of sick ♥♥♥♥? After that, I decided to start a new game again, just to test out what would happen.

Black screen. Three bodies. Leah didn't even have rags left on her skeleton, Penny was nearly nothing but bones, and Pam was still somewhat fresh.

DEATH COUNT: 3

I didn't know what to do. I still didn't want to play this sick mod's stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game, but I really, really didn't know what the ♥♥♥♥ to do. Was the only way I could get Leah and Penny and Pam back really by making a "clean slate", like it had told me? Was I really going to have to shoot every single villager in the game, and have to see their bloodied, gored, blown away faces with each one, before seeing their broken, trashed rooms and their slowly decaying bodies? Not to mention having to face their family members and friends as I went to go kill them, too.

I supposed I was going to have to do it, though. I was going to have to play its stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game. At least none of the villagers had any dialogue at that point, though all of their portraits were either of crying or of anger.

[YOU HAVE KILLED GEORGE] [YOU HAVE KILLED SAM] [YOU HAVE KILLED ROBIN]

After a while, it started getting more inventive with the messages, tormenting me each time I killed another villager.

[YOU'RE STARTING TO LIKE THIS, AREN'T YOU? YOU HAVE KILLED MARU] [WOW, YOU'RE PRETTY VICIOUS. YOU HAVE KILLED JAS] [YOU MIGHT THINK I'M THE SICK ONE, BUT LOOK AT WHAT YOU'RE DOING. YOU HAVE KILLED KROBUS]

Yes, even Krobus had a gored face portrait. I